Let me begin by saying how intensely jealous I am of those of you who haven’t seen Drishyam, the Malayalam movie that inspired Papanasam. Most times, it doesn’t matter whether we’ve seen the original film or read the book the screenplay is based on – because, as the cliché goes, there are only so many stories, and most of what we see involves permutations and combinations of the elements in those stories. And we watch these remakes for, say, the freshness the new cast brings to the material, or what the director does with it. But once in a while, you get a premise so gobsmackingly good, so fresh and audacious, that nothing anyone does can recreate your first time. I experienced that when I watched Gone Girl after reading the book. Something similar happened with Papanasam.